DOCSLIB.ORG

224215582.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
224215582.Pdf View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OpenEdition Cahiers d’études africaines 178 | 2005 Le retour du politique Between Discourse and Reality The Politics of Oil and Ijaw Ethnic Nationalism in the Niger Delta Kathryn Nwajiaku Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/5448 DOI: 10.4000/etudesafricaines.5448 ISSN: 1777-5353 Publisher Éditions de l’EHESS Printed version Date of publication: 25 June 2005 Number of pages: 457-496 ISBN: 978-2-7132-2048-7 ISSN: 0008-0055 Electronic reference Kathryn Nwajiaku, « Between Discourse and Reality », Cahiers d’études africaines [Online], 178 | 2005, Online since 30 June 2008, connection on 19 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ etudesafricaines/5448 ; DOI : 10.4000/etudesafricaines.5448 This text was automatically generated on 19 April 2019. © Cahiers d’Études africaines Between Discourse and Reality 1 Between Discourse and Reality The Politics of Oil and Ijaw Ethnic Nationalism in the Niger Delta Kathryn Nwajiaku 1 On 11 December 1998, 500 youths from 40 different clans, together with representatives from 25 political organisations from an “ethnic” group in the Niger Delta known as the Ijaw, gathered together in Kaiama, a town in the Kolokuma/Opokuma Local Government Area (LGA) of Bayelsa state. After prayers, speeches and much deliberation, delegates issued the Kaiama Declaration—a ten-point statement demanding that all oil companies leave “Ijaw land” by 30 December 1998, pending the resolution by the Nigerian federal government of questions relating to the ownership and control of petroleum resources and political autonomy for the Ijaw. Between 29 and 30 December 1998, protest marches and demonstrations took place throughout Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers states and were met with the full weight of the Nigerian military. Up to 15,000 soldiers and two warships were sent to Bayelsa by the then military government of General Abusalami Abubakar and a state of emergency declared. An estimated 200 people died during the events of late 1998 and early 1999, whilst many more were injured, tortured and raped. 2 Around the same time, violence prevented local government, State Assembly and governorship elections scheduled for 5 December and 9 January, from taking place until 30 January 1999, some three weeks after elections results were already out elsewhere in the country. Again in July 2002, dozens of people were killed when two youth groups in Nembe, Ogboloma/biri 1 in Bayelsa, clashed during the local government primaries for the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). One of the groups was supported by the former Commissioner for the Environment of the Bayelsa state government, who has since fled to the United States, and the other by a manager of President Obasanjo’s 1999 election campaign in Bayelsa 2. In 2003, after the presidential, National Assembly, state and local government elections had taken place, the Transition Monitoring Group named Rivers and Bayelsa states, two of the three major oil-producing states (the third being Delta state) as “states that fell short of minimum acceptable standards for any credible elections” 3. 3 The Kaiama Declaration and its violent aftermath marked a turning point in Ijaw political history and a highpoint in the “restiveness” 4 that had become a characteristic feature of Cahiers d’études africaines, 178 | 2005 Between Discourse and Reality 2 life in the Niger Delta. The Kaiama Declaration also gave birth to the Ijaw Youth Council ( IYC), an organisation which took upon itself the task of co-ordinating and speaking on behalf of all Ijaw youth throughout the Delta to ensure the successful realisation of the goals of the Kaiama Declaration. Many of the brains behind the Kaiama meeting and the formation of the IYC, young men like Oronto Douglas, Robert Azibola and Von Kemedi, had been closely involved in campaigning on behalf of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), which in 1990 issued the Ogoni Bill of Rights and provided a model for the Kaiama declaration to come. It was in the wake of the disintegration of MOSOP which followed Saro-Wiwa’s killing in 1995 by the then military regime of General Sani Abacha, that the IYC emerged to try and do for the Ijaw what MOSOP had tried to do for the Ogoni. 4 For more than a decade, young men and also a large number of women from different towns and villages, different linguistic and cultural communities as well as different social backgrounds, had been using “direct action” tactics which specifically targeted oil companies. One notable example took place in 1998 in the Ogbia LGA in Bayelsa state when representatives from youth organisations, Councils of Chiefs and Elders, Community Development Committees (CDCs) and a disparate group of young men and women, many of whom were university undergraduates, from three villages (Imiringi, Otuasega and Elebele) known as “Kolo Creek”, collectively organised a “general strike”. This involved the occupation of the Shell flow station in Imiringi during which all Shell personnel were ordered to leave the premises peacefully, the disconnection of the manifold controlling the conduit of petroleum from all the oil pipelines in the area, and the forced disruption of production from the Kolo Creek area for one week. The action was in protest against the lack of social investment by the oil company, Shell, locally known as SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development Company), which since 1971, as the operating partner in one of many joint venture oil and gas production projects in Nigeria, had been extracting light crude oil from wells in each of the villages in Kolo Creek. The events of October 1998 marked a turning point in relations between Shell and the people of Kolo Creek, who had for many years appealed to Shell for greater levels of investment in development projects, greater opportunities for employment and the awarding of contracts to local people, but to little or no avail. The results of the “general strike” were largely successful, inducing Shell to improve social provisions at least for those in the immediate Kolo Creek area. The events of 1998-1999 also cemented a new composite Kolo Creek political identity as distinct from that of the rest of Ogbia. 5 The Ijaw nationalists who formed the IYC wanted to create a popular mass movement out of disparate episodes of “uprising” like the Kolo Creek general strike and to unite the culturally diverse groups that make up the Ijaw people under a single ethnic umbrella. Contemporary Ijaw nationalist narratives claim that an Ijaw ethnic nationality existed in an historical and cultural sense long before the discovery of oil. They describe the Ijaw as 40 clans comprising of 500 “communities” or “sub-groups” 5 with some seven distinct and mutually unintelligible languages between them (Williamson 1968), scattered across extensive geographical distances, extending from Ondo state in the west of Nigeria to Akwa Ibom state in the east of the country. These narratives hold that the political marginalisation of the Ijaw as an ethnic minority group since the 1950s has prevented them from benefiting fully from the oil resources that sustain the Nigerian nation. It has also prevented them from addressing the environmental and ecological problems caused by over 40 years of oil production and exploration activity in the Niger Delta. So although Cahiers d’études africaines, 178 | 2005 Between Discourse and Reality 3 oil, they argue, has not created the Ijaw nation, the struggle for ownership and more effective control of the revenues accruing from oil, has served to galvanise disparate members of the Ijaw ethnic community around a common plight 6. Politically the aim of Ijaw nationalists is to use their strategic location in the oil-producing areas as leverage with which to push for a more effective voice for the Ijaw, deemed to constitute a political minority within the Nigerian polity. 6 The article examines the background to the general strike and its aftermath, and, through it, explores competing and often violent attempts to redefine ethnic group membership in an “Ijaw” oil-producing community in the Niger Delta. It draws its observations from research carried out in 2002 on the responses of three “host communities” to oil companies in Ogbia LGA, which according to Nigeria’s ethnic nomenclature are classified as Ijaw. It assesses the extent to which the narrative of “uprising and struggle” so frequently expressed in the public rhetoric of Ijaw nationalists in the IYC and INC 7, and replicated in academic writings about the Delta (Naanen 1995; Osaghae 1995; Obi 1999) is borne out by events that took place in oil-producing communities in Bayelsa state in the 1990s. It examines whether the “restiveness” in the Niger Delta—the occupations of oil company facilities, the confiscation of oil company assets and kidnapping of personnel, the cases of armed confrontation with federal and state security forces—reflects the appropriation by Ijaw communities living at the site of oil production and exploration activities of new pan-Ijaw nationalist discourses to which “resource control” and the creation of Ijaw ethnically homogeneous states are central. 7 Ijaw nationalists within the IYC and INC have been keen to use the “restiveness” of the Niger Delta amongst groups they have defined as belonging to the Ijaw ethnic group to bolster their demands for resource control, the creation of more states within the Nigerian Federation and the greater inclusion and political recognition of the Ijaw within the Nigerian polity, who they claim constitute Nigeria’s fourth largest ethnic group 8. Yet, at the micro level, in villages and in the LGAs of Bayelsa state, it is not at all clear that the conflicts between oil-producing communities and oil companies are being articulated on a pan-Ijaw nationalist platform.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ethnic Militias in Nigeria and Their Impact on Democratic Consolidation
    Ethnic Militias in Nigeria and Their Impact on Democratic Consolidation by Ǿyvind Sandve Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of International Studies (e.g. Arts) at Stellenbosch University Faculty of Arts Supervisor: Prof Pierre du Toit March 2009 Declaration By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the owner of the copyright thereof (unless to the extent explicitly otherwise stated) and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. Date: February 2009 Copyright © 2009 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved 2 Table of contents Title page ..............................................................................................................................1 Declaration........................................................................................................................2 Table of contents .............................................................................................................3 Abstract .............................................................................................................................6 Opsomming ......................................................................................................................8 Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................... 10 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Demobilization of the Ogoni Protest Campaign in the Niger Delta Tijen Demirel-Pegg Scott Pe
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by IUPUIScholarWorks Razed, repressed and bought off: The demobilization of the Ogoni protest campaign in the Niger Delta Tijen Demirel-Pegg Scott Pegg Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Abstract: This study examines the demobilization of the Ogoni protest campaign in the oil producing Niger Delta region of Nigeria in the mid-1990s. The contentious politics literature suggest that protest campaigns demobilize as a consequence of the polarization between radical and moderate protesters. In this study, we offer a different causal mechanism and argue that protest campaigns can demobilize before such indiscriminate repression. Moreover, states can prevent the subsequent radicalization of a protest campaign followed by harsh repression by coopting the radicals and the remaining moderate elites while continuing to use repression to prevent collective action. Our conclusion assesses how relations between extractive industry firms and their local host communities have or have not changed in the twenty years since the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. Published in Extractive Industries and Society This is the authors’ manuscript of the article published in final edited form at: Demirel-Pegg, Tijen, and Scott Pegg (2015), “Razed, Repressed, and Bought Off: The Demobilization of the Ogoni Protest Campaign in the Niger Delta,” in Extractive Industries and Society, Vol.2, pp. 654-663. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X15001343 Introduction On January 4, 1993, around 300,000 Ogoni people in Rivers State, Nigeria peacefully protested against the environmental devastation of their land caused by the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), the Nigerian subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell (hereafter, Shell).
    [Show full text]
  • The Right to Self Determination Under Contemporary International Law: the Case of Minority Groups in Nigeria
    International Journal of Innovative Legal & Political Studies 8(1):26-40, Jan.-Mar., 2020 © SEAHI PUBLICATIONS, 2020 www.seahipaj.org ISSN: 2467-8503 The Right To Self Determination Under Contemporary International Law: The Case Of Minority Groups In Nigeria O. W. Igwe*; Amazuo Bereprebofa** & Okeah Anthony*** Faculty of Law, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria ABSTRACT The right to self-determination is contained in international legal instruments like the United Nations Charter and the African Charter on Human and Peoples‟ Rights. The ICJ has affirmed its erga omnes nature. The agitation for self-determination in Nigeria has become a topical issue. Historically, several independent tribes were amalgamated by Britain without first seeking and obtaining their consent. Coercion was largely employed to conquer these tribes. Britain succeeded in amalgamating Nigeria without first uniting the spirit of the people as a nation. The 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended) provides that Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation. However, this one indivisible and indissoluble phenomenon has been trounced with threats of collapse since the Civil War in 1966 when secessionists declared Republic of Biafra. IPOB and MASSOB have continued to push for Biafra. The underpinning of their agitation is alleged marginalization and injustice. The Niger Delta struggle is that for internal self-determination over perceived marginalization. The Kaiama Declaration, the Ogoni Bill of Rights and militant activities from groups like MEND and Niger Delta Avengers are all pointers to this struggle. Their anger is that of injustice associated with exploration and exploitation of oil found in their land. This article examined the agitations of Biafra and Niger Delta for self-determination through the prism of municipal and contemporary international law.
    [Show full text]
  • Behind the Mask
    NIGER DELTA ECONOMIES OF VIOLENCE WORKING PAPERS Working Paper No. 11 BEHIND THE MASK Explaining the Emergence of the MEND Militia in Nigeriaʼs Oil-Bearing Niger Delta Ike Okonta St. Peterʼs College, Oxford University 2006 Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA The United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC, USA Our Niger Delta, Port Harcourt, Nigeria BEHIND THE MASK: EXPLAINING THE EMERGENCE OF THE MEND MILITIA IN NIGERIA’S OIL-BEARING NIGER DELTA Ike Okonta St.Peter’s College Oxford University 1. INTRODUCTION ‘They have taken crafty counsel against thy people; and consulted against thy hidden ones. They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation.’ Oboko Bello, President of Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities (FNDIC), quoting Psalm 83:1-5. The fragile truce brokered between Nigeria’s central government and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in April 2006 jerked to a bloody halt on 20th August. On that afternoon soldiers of the Joint Task Force, a contingent of the Nigerian Army, Navy and Air Force deployed by the government to enforce its authority on the restive oil-bearing Niger Delta ambushed fifteen members of the MEND militia in the creeks of western delta and murdered them. The dead men had gone to negotiate the release of a Shell Oil worker kidnapped by youth in Letugbene, a neighbouring community. The Shell staff also died in the massacre. The incident occurred five days after Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s President, instructed armed forces commanders in the region to resort to force and quickly ‘pacify’ the region.
    [Show full text]
  • Post-Amnesty Programme in the Niger Delta: Challenges and Prospects
    POST -amnesty programme In the nIger delta: challenges and prospects by Ol uWAToYIN o. oLuWANIYI R ICHARD P ET y@T HE M AP A DDICT Introduction (NDVF) – including its leader, Isaac Adaka boro – for the The most current issue that resonates in the Niger Delta insurgency fomented by the group in 1966. However, the discourse is the amnesty programme. This was introduced unconditional amnesty granted in 2009 embraced not just a by the late President yar’Adua in 2009, against a groundswell of violent conflicts in the region and threats the violence portended for the Nigerian state, including reduction in revenues accruing from oil sales. Amnesty in the Niger Above: This Envisat image highlights the lower Niger Delta region can be traced back to 1967, when the yakubu River system in the West African country of Nigeria, Gowon regime pardoned the Niger Delta Volunteer Force where the Niger River (left) and the benue River merge. 46 I conflict trends REUTERS / THE / REUTERS b IGGER PICTURE IGGER Nigeria’s President Yar’Adua signs the Niger Delta amnesty package at the presidential villa in Abuja on 25 June 2009. President Yar’Adua stated that amnesty would be granted to militants in the Niger Delta if they lay down their weapons by 4 october 2009 and cease fighting. group, but all militant groups in the Niger Delta region that colonial era, the struggle over the sale and regulation of participated in militancy. This amnesty encouraged militants the prices of palm oil pitted british traders and Niger Delta to take advantage of a 60-day window (6 August–4 October indigenous traders against each other.
    [Show full text]
  • Cahiers D'études Africaines, 191 | 2008
    Cahiers d’études africaines 191 | 2008 Varia Alterity, Marginality and the National Question in the Poetry of the Niger Delta Oyeniyi Okunoye Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/11742 DOI : 10.4000/etudesafricaines.11742 ISSN : 1777-5353 Éditeur Éditions de l’EHESS Édition imprimée Date de publication : 20 septembre 2008 Pagination : 413-436 ISBN : 978-2-7132-2184-2 ISSN : 0008-0055 Référence électronique Oyeniyi Okunoye, « Alterity, Marginality and the National Question in the Poetry of the Niger Delta », Cahiers d’études africaines [En ligne], 191 | 2008, mis en ligne le 20 septembre 2011, consulté le 01 mai 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/11742 ; DOI : 10.4000/ etudesafricaines.11742 Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 1 mai 2019. © Cahiers d’Études africaines Alterity, Marginality and the National Question in the Poetry of the Niger Delta 1 Alterity, Marginality and the National Question in the Poetry of the Niger Delta1 Oyeniyi Okunoye “[T]he Niger Delta literary landscape has continued to flourish even as its physical environment is wilting.” Joseph Ushie (2006: 22-23) 1 To insist on perpetuating paradigms that affirm the continued relevance of shared experiences across national boundaries as basis for appraising African writing in the twenty-first century is to overlook the fact that much of the African literary imagination is no longer responding to shared experiences the way it did in the years immediately following independence. Malawian writing in the last three decades, for instance, has at once been inspired and conditioned by the damage that the infamous Banda regime, with its policy of censorship and repression, did to the psyche of the people.
    [Show full text]
  • Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta
    DISCUSSION paper 47 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) POLITICAL MARGINALIZATION, REPRESSION AND PETRO -INSURGENCY IN THE NIGER DELTA ELIAS COURSON ISSN 1104-8417 ISBN 978-91-7106-657-2 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) DISCUSSION PAPER 47 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) Political Marginalization, Repression and Petro-Insurgency in the Niger Delta ELIAS COURSON NORDISKA AFRIKAINSTITUTET, UPPSALA 2009 1 Elias Courson Indexing terms Energy resources Petroleum industry Transnational corporations Macroeconomics Geopolitics Conflicts Violence Marginality Protest movements Nigeria Niger Delta The opinions expressed in this volume are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Language checking: Elaine Almén ISSN 1104-8417 ISBN 978-91-7106-657-2 © the author and Nordiska Afrikainstitutet 2009 Printed in Sweden by GML Print on Demand AB, Stockholm 2009 Grafisk Form Elin Olsson, Today Press AB 2 Elias Courson Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) Contents Foreword .........................................................................................................................................................................................................5 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................................................................7 The Niger Delta and the Oil Factor ..........................................................................................................................................8
    [Show full text]
  • Dynamics of Leadership Styles Within the Ogoni and Ijaw Movements in the Niger Delta
    Journal of Social and Political Psychology jspp.psychopen.eu | 2195-3325 Review Articles Dynamics of Leadership Styles Within the Ogoni and Ijaw Movements in the Niger Delta Zainab Ladan Mai-Bornu* a [a] Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom. Abstract Much of the literature on the Niger Delta deals with the Ogoni and Ijaw groups together, as having common lived experiences within a shared geographical location. However, the nature of the leaderships led the two movements to adopt distinct strategies in their struggles against the Nigerian state and multinational oil companies. Successful collective action is often ascribed to effective leadership and to the employment of social identity to drive collective group behaviour. Building on the Comparative Case Studies approach, this article compares the nature of leadership within the two movements, and particularly the choices that led Ogoni leaders to preach nonviolence and Ijaw leaders to advocate violence. The article analyses the role of the leaders in determining the strategies adopted by the movements, and examines the importance of the psychological drivers of the collective narratives developed by the two groups of leaders in accounting for the different trajectories. These issues are investigated within the social and political psychological context utilising three axes of comparison — vertical, horizontal and transversal. Findings suggest that strategic choices are frequently based on charismatic leadership, particularly when group leaders are able to utilise a heightened awareness of identity, and on conscious and unconscious fears linking past and current threats. Keywords: leadership, conflict, Nigeria, Niger Delta, nonviolence, violence, Ogoni, Ijaw Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2020, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Oil, Development, and the Politics of the Bottom Billion Michael Watts University of California, Berkeley
    Macalester International Volume 24 Whither Development?: The Struggle for Article 11 Livelihood in the Time of Globalization Summer 2009 Oil, Development, and the Politics of the Bottom Billion Michael Watts University of California, Berkeley Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/macintl Recommended Citation Watts, ichM ael (2009) "Oil, Development, and the Politics of the Bottom Billion," Macalester International: Vol. 24, Article 11. Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/macintl/vol24/iss1/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for Global Citizenship at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Macalester International by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Oil, Development, and the Politics of the Bottom Billion1 Michael Watts The secret of great wealth with no obvious source is some forgotten crime, forgotten because it was done neatly. Honoré de Balzac [R]egions at the epicenter of oil production are torn apart by repeated conflicts. Achille Mbembe (2001) The Economist of 4 August 2007 called it a “slip of a book” and “set to become a classic.” Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion argues that most of the bottom billion, the world’s chronically poor, live in 58 countries (almost three quarters of which are African) distinguished by their lack of economic growth and the prevalence of civil conflict. Most are caught in a quartet
    [Show full text]
  • From Adaka Boro to the Niger Delta Avengers: the Dynamics and Management of the Revolt in Nigeria’S Niger Delta
    International Journal of African and Asian Studies www.iiste.org ISSN 2409-6938 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.43, 2018 From Adaka Boro to the Niger Delta Avengers: The Dynamics and Management of the Revolt in Nigeria’s Niger Delta Chris O. Ikporukpo Department of Geography, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria Abstract Although, there was an earlier expression of dissatisfaction, the Twelve-Day Revolution led by Adaka Boro marked the beginning of the revolt in the Niger Delta Region. The revolt may be divided into six phases. Although, the objectives of the phases are similar, the approach has varied. The basic driver of the revolt has been the need for justice in the fiscal federalism regime in order to promote development in the region. The strategies employed in the revolt includes: advocacy, civil disobedience, sabotage, kidnapping and armed resistance. The approaches used by government in managing the revolt include re-engineering the fiscal federalism regime, establishment of development agencies for the region, and armed suppression. It is the ineffectiveness of the management strategies that has resulted in the unending revolt. Keywords : Fiscal federalism, Development, Revolt, Management of revolt, Niger Delta. 1. Introduction On February 23, 1966, Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro, a former police officer and former president of the students’ union of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, as “Leader of the Liberation Government” and “General Officer Commanding the Niger Delta Volunteer Service” declared part of the Niger Delta Region “The Niger Delta Peoples Republic” as a means to free the region from the oppression, underdevelopment and neglect it had suffered.
    [Show full text]
  • The Internationalization of Oil Violence in the Niger Delta of Nigeria*
    The Internationalization of Oil Violence in the Niger Delta of Nigeria* Victor Ojakorotu** Abstract This paper unpacks the crisis in the Niger Delta of Nigeria with reference to its external dimensions by which is meant the involvement of international non-governmental organisations in the politics of local environmental governance. It takes as its point of departure the events (in the 1990s) that underpinned the international community’s engagement with an issue that could have been regarded as Nigeria’s domestic affair and follows with an assessment of the impact of internationalisation of the crisis on the major actors in the region. It is noted that the crisis in the Niger Delta has been predicated for over four decades on a number of complex issues in Nigeria’s geo-political landscape. The emergence of organized pressure groups (in the early 1990s) and their protestations against human rights abuses and environmental problems in the region added a ‘new’ dimension to the crisis. In tackling its thematic concern, this paper interrogates the involvement of the international civil society in the Niger Delta and concludes with an appraisal of the extent to which the internationalisation of the crisis engendered both attitudinal and policy shifts on the part of the main actors. Introduction Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is undisputedly one of the most richly endowed countries on the continent. It boasts of immense resources – human and material – which provide opportunities for national development. Historically, Nigeria’s potentials for rapid industrialization and development had been recognized before the country’s independence in 1960.
    [Show full text]
  • THE SYSTEMATIC FAILURE to INTERPRET ARTICLE IV of the INTERNATIONAL COVENANT on CIVIL and POLITICAL RIGHTS: Is THERE a PUBLIC EMERGENCY in NIGERIA?
    American University International Law Review Volume 15 | Issue 5 Article 5 2000 The ysS tematic Failure to Interpret Article IV of the Internantional Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Is There a Public Emergency in Nigeria? Scott oleD zal Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/auilr Part of the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Dolezal, Scott. "The ysS tematic Failure to Interpret Article IV of the Internantional Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Is There a Public Emergency in Nigeria?" American University International Law Review 15, no. 5 (2000): 1163-1209. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Washington College of Law Journals & Law Reviews at Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in American University International Law Review by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SYSTEMATIC FAILURE TO INTERPRET ARTICLE IV OF THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS: Is THERE A PUBLIC EMERGENCY IN NIGERIA? SCOTT DOLEZAL* INTRODUCTION ............................................. 1164 I. BACKGROUND ........................................... 1170 A. THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS .................................................. 1170 B. THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE AND ARTICLE IV ....... 1174 II. DETERMINING WHETHER A PUBLIC EMERGENCY E
    [Show full text]